


The Practical Application of Pain

by Nebulad



Series: Nature of the Gods [2]
Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Abuse, Dyrwood, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Slavery, a retrospection on them anyway not like active plot content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 01:24:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16944369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nebulad/pseuds/Nebulad
Summary: “It’s how I fight,” he said with a slow smile.“Until you run out of blood, certainly.” He could feel his lips curling, and evidently Raul noticed because he leaned just far enough that Aloth had to chase him. It was a strange sort of playfulness, as he was still bleeding. “You’re trying to distract me because you know I’m right,” he scolded softly. Raul grinned, crooked and handsome and at an impossible angle.“Is it working?” He leaned forward on his palm, but the spell shattered when he grimaced in pain.





	The Practical Application of Pain

“I’ll never understand why you let yourself get hurt like this,” Aloth snapped, his hands working steadily at the gash on Raul’s shoulder. The man was big enough that he had to cant his torso so elf could apply first aid, but his position  _ couldn’t  _ have been comfortable and he’d been leaning for well over half an hour now.

“I’m a monk,” he said evenly. Aloth waited for a moment for him to continue the thought, but he didn’t. That was the entire idea, in a neat three words.

He dabbed a little blood away, comforted by how easily it’d begun to slow at the same time he was annoyed by having to care for it in the first place. He knew precious little healing magic— that was more Pallegina’s area of expertise, but Raul preferred field care. Seeing the scars that arched and criss-crossed across the violently raised skin of his back, Aloth suspected he preferred scarring. “That’s hardly an excuse.”

“It’s how I fight,” he said with a slow smile.

“Until you run out of blood, certainly.” He could feel his lips curling, and evidently Raul noticed because he leaned just far enough that Aloth had to chase him. It was a strange sort of playfulness, as he was still bleeding. “You’re trying to distract me because you know I’m right,” he scolded softly. Raul grinned, crooked and handsome and at an impossible angle.

“Is it working?” He leaned forward on his palm, but the spell shattered when he grimaced in pain.

Aloth straightened him sternly, going back to his sterilizing cloth. “I never understood the philosophy of suffering being a form of fulfillment. It all seems a little masturbator— or… rather…” He trailed off, uncertain about how he was going to… save it. Usually he could dismiss his misstep as a consequence of Iselmyr’s existence, but  _ maturbatory  _ was five syllables and so even if she had it in her repertoire, she wouldn’t say it. “... sorry?” he tried.

Raul was smiling, so he tried to unclench his fingers. “I’ve met some like that, certainly— directionless, and think pain is supposed to inherently  _ mean  _ something through virtue of having experienced it. I was so…  _ angry  _ the first time someone implied that suffering made you a more whole human being— I mean, what I wouldn’t have given, back in Vailia.” He adjusted himself, evidently done with the fussing over his shoulder. He turned and leaned back, reclining with his arms behind his head scandalously close— scandalous for Aedyr, anyway— to Aloth’s hip. It provided an opportunity to examine him in an  _ of course  _ purely curiosity-driven capacity— Aloth had never met many godlikes, let alone those whose facial hair was like the clean-looking grass in a broad field, or whose arms were so… well, there were a lot of adjectives for the strength in Raul’s arms, but living in a wizard-culture had made such blatant strength of body almost foreign in both concept and appearance.

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” he mused, wondering for one mad moment what his horns would feel like. They were ridged and curved backwards, more like antlers than a horn, really— though, sturdier. They’d travelled together for many months now, and Aloth thought he would have noticed if Raul shed them. In ignorance of the strange turn Aloth’s thoughts had taken, however, Raul sighed deeply from the very centre of his chest. The depth of the sound was bizarrely… satisfying.

“It’s all right; monks don’t take great pains to be understood, but don’t also grasp that we’re not as straightforward as a fighter or a wizard,” he said, his eyes slipping shut. “I just… back home, after I—” And he stopped, and so did Aloth because he’d never said anything about his life before this. Many people had recognised him as a slave, although it was beyond him how they seemed to know, but it was all the more reason for his companions to  _ never  _ ask. It was the same as Edér’s whole… situation. It wasn’t the sort of thing you asked probing questions about.

“You don’t have to explain yourself,” Aloth hummed softly, after a few seconds of silence.

Almost thoughtfully, Raul folded his hands over his broad stomach, staring unblinkingly at the warm pink sky. His demeanour changed, although he didn’t sit up— something serious dropped between them and Aloth did his best not to tense up. “I spent a long time as a slave,” he started. “As long as I could remember, day in and day out. Nothing changed, nothing deviated from the routine that’d been drilled into me since childhood, and it just… numbs the mind. It’s hard to understand what an electric shock it is to hear something like  _ tomorrow my master chokes on his own whip,  _ to someone who lives in this… fog.”

“Skaen,” he offered, having nothing more profound. Personally he found the god distasteful, as he would find anyone with a penchant for torture-murder. If it was reserved for abusers then perhaps it would be less unsettling, but Skaen was perplexingly indiscriminate.

He nodded, then shrugged. “I thought I might become religious, but even after…” He paused for a breath, and it was almost hypnotic to watch his bare chest rise and fall with it. “After I killed the man who thought he was my master, I found I didn’t have a lot of stomach for sacrificing something that wasn’t mine to give— and I couldn’t think of living souls as something inherently mine.” Aloth let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding, and Raul smiled knowingly. “Monotony wasn’t the  _ worst  _ offence, of course. Boredom and servitude is its own suffering, but you’re my field medic; you’ve seen what a mess was made of me.”

He had. His back was a raised map of his own life, and it didn’t stop there. His thighs, his legs, his arms— there was no favourite spot, and all were equally ill-used. None of that even counted scars that had healed better than others, or even internal damage that’d be felt when Raul was older. There was nothing to directly say in response to the glib way he’d pointed out his own injuries; and Aloth must’ve looked like he was thinking very hard about what he was going to do instead, because Raul let a breath of laughter pass.

A smile was trying to work its way to the surface past the gloom, but he couldn’t begrudge the solemnity of the moment winning out. “I just… I wanted my suffering to have meaning. I wanted all suffering— that’s where the others get it wrong. They think that pain generates its own meaning inherently, but there’s more than enough already in the world. Dyrwood alone is hobbled and dragging its bloodied torso through the muck on exhausted arms. That needs to  _ mean  _ something; the pain we bear  _ has  _ to lead to satisfaction, in the end. It has to be used productively in order to quell itself.”

Aloth’s hands moved unconsciously to Raul’s face, catching himself just before he began to thoughtfully trace the serious curve of his brow or the full line of his lips. He shuttered the urge just under where he imagined Iselmyr was stored, to the left of the soul, telling himself he would come back to it when he was ready. “And how would you see the Dyrwood’s pain used?” he asked, swallowing the flush that would expose his ill-thought compulsion. The Watcher either hadn’t noticed or tactfully chose to say nothing, either of which he was more than grateful for.

“I don’t know.” Aloth waits again for the rest, but it doesn’t come.

“That’s it?”

“For now. I’ll have to decide something eventually, I’m sure, but for now… no idea.” And in a strange way, Aloth admired the clarity of it. Back in Aedyr, both at home and in the academy, the lack of an answer was not an acceptable response; a lack of knowledge could very well make you the subject of ridicule from both peers and mentors. Raul had no such hang-ups, and uncertainty was a well acquainted part of his life— one that he had made his peace with.

Before he could formulate a response— something half-stammered about his own lack of surety and envy over the casual confidence Raul emanated— Durance’s voice raised above the steady din of camp, making them both wince. It was never a good idea to leave him alone with… anyone really, but especially Edér and Pallegina. “I think that’s our cue to return to the others,” he hummed, putting his hands down.

Raul worried his lower lip for a moment, before bringing himself back up to a sitting position. “Or we could just… let whatever happens happen.” He rubbed his eyes, slouching; Aloth could hardly blame him, because quite frankly there was no one who didn’t loathe the crude, roughened dirt priest.

Aloth waited, still and tense but not entirely against the idea of just letting Edér snap and string the bastard up if it bought the two of them a little more time, until Raul hauled himself up to his feet and groaned. He turned and held his hand out, and the wizard took it. It always made him feel like— like he had in the Sanitorium, reaching out for an anchor and finding Raul… steady and strong and calm and… and all that was going to be shut up under his ribs until he… was equipped to deal with it. Raul’s fingers slipped away and Aloth suppressed a shudder.

“Edér wouldn’t even feel bad,” the Watcher said with a teasing smile, gesturing outwards to allow Aloth passage forward first.

“You would.” He nudged him on the way by, inordinately thrilled by the casual camaraderie. He’d never— proper friends were difficult to make in his situation, and this was the very first time that he felt invaluable to a group of people if only for the pleasure of his company.

Raul winced, but brushed his own fingers absently over the spot Aloth had touched. “Don’t remind me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title sounded pretty kinky for a fic that was pretty much just a deep dive into pre-Dyrwood Raul and Aloth's big gay crush on him, huh? Also Aloth is definitely me as I'm creating Raul, just. Horns? Big fucking muscle arms? Tummy? We're like that meme of Mrs. Puff just _sweating_.
> 
> Anyway, [here's the game I'm writing,](https://nebulous.itch.io/manor-hill) slowly because in a strange and horrible compound of writer's block and an early winter cold, all I can manage to do is crank out old drafts like this one. And my [blog](https://nebulaad.tumblr.com) can be found right there, for original content and hot pictures of video games.


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